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By Jim Berlin

Teenagers typically think they know it all because their “all” is a tiny house sparsely furnished: a little space of self-absorption crammed floor to ceiling with renegade hormones, endless peer pressure, high school studies and a hectic social calendar that begins and end with the weekend.

That’s about it; it’s all they know and they know it all.

The passage of time eventually evicts them from their tiny houses, shoves their horizons outward – college, work – and they learn the world is large and the things they don’t know almost endless.

But Justin Bieber is still a teenager, and there he was visiting the Amsterdam home of another teen, Anne Frank. After touring the place where the doomed Jewish girl wrote the diary heard ‘round the world, Justin inscribed this message in the museum’s guest book:

“Truly inspiring to be able to come here. Anne was a great girl. Hopefully she would have been a Belieber (one of his fans).”

Critics say the note’s flippancy suggests a couple of unflattering things about Justin: (1) He may not quite have a grasp of that Holocaust thing, and (2) his visit to the museum was all about him.

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I see it differently. Tens of thousands of Justin’s fans have now, for the first time, heard about another teenager who lived not so long ago in a world outrageously different than their own. A teen who never got to leave her teenage years. Perhaps it will inspire some of them to peek out the windows of their tiny houses and get a glimpse of a world their school teachers have largely ignored.

They may see things like World War II, and men called Hitler and Emperor Hirohito, and stories of what their great grandfathers did to give them the life we enjoy today. Maybe they’ll even pick up a copy of Anne’s book, The Diary of a Young Girl.